Optical lithography techniques are currently used to make most microelectronic devices. However, it is believed that these methods are reaching their limits in resolution. Sub-micron scale lithography has been a critical process in the microelectronics industry. The use of sub-micron scale lithography allows manufacturers to meet the increased demand for smaller and more densely packed electronic circuits on chips. It is expected that the microelectronics industry will pursue structures that are as small or smaller than about 50 nm. Further, there are emerging applications of nanometer scale lithography in the areas of opto-electronics and magnetic storage. For example, photonic crystals and high-density patterned magnetic memory of the order of terabytes per square inch may require sub-100 nm scale lithography.
For making sub-50 nm structures, optical lithography techniques may require the use of very short wavelengths of light (e.g., about 13.2 nm). At these short wavelengths, many common materials are not optically transparent and therefore imaging systems typically have to be constructed using complicated reflective optics. Furthermore, obtaining a light source that has sufficient output intensity at these wavelengths is difficult. Such systems lead to extremely complicated equipment and processes that may be prohibitively expensive. It is also believed that high-resolution e-beam lithography techniques, though very precise, are too slow for high-volume commercial applications.
Several imprint lithography techniques have been investigated as low cost, high volume manufacturing alternatives to conventional photolithography for high-resolution patterning. Imprint lithography techniques are similar in that they use a template containing topography to replicate a surface relief in a film on the substrate. One form of imprint lithography is known as hot embossing.
Hot embossing techniques face several challenges: i) pressures greater than 10 MPa are typically required to imprint relief structures, ii) temperatures must be greater than the Tg of the polymer film, iii) patterns (in the substrate film) have been limited to isolation trenches or dense features similar to repeated lines and spaces. Hot embossing is unsuited for printing isolated raised structures, such as lines and dots. This is because the highly viscous liquids resulting from increasing the temperature of the substrate films requires extremely high pressures and long time durations to move the large volume of liquids needed to create isolated structures. This pattern dependency makes hot embossing unattractive. Also, high pressures and temperatures, thermal expansion, and material deformation generate severe technical challenges in the development of layer-to-layer alignment at the accuracies needed for device fabrication. Such pattern placement distortions lead to problems in applications, such as patterned magnetic media for storage applications. The addressing of the patterned medium bit by the read-write head becomes very challenging unless the pattern placement distortions can be kept to a minimum.
While the invention is susceptible to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments thereof are shown by way of example in the drawings and will herein be described in detail. It should be understood, however, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit the invention to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the present invention as defined by the appended claims.